Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1918 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

I spent a pfennig for a rose, a groschen for some taffy, and said, “The way the money goes would drive a ifellow daffy! The cost of living keeps us hot, it’s threatening to bust us, and some one surely should be shot, if there’s such stuff as justice.” I paid a pistole for a pup, a doubloon for a daisy, and then I reared three cubits up, and said the times are crazy. “No matter what a fellow makes,” I said, my bosom bleeding, “the money goes for cats and cakes, and other things he’s needing. He cannot save a single yen, however hard he’s trying, he’s stony broke and broke again.whenever he goes buying.’’ I paid a guilder for a goose, a kroner for a cradle, a noble for a hangman’s noose, a livre for a ladle. And I was just about to say that it is past man’s powers, to put a little sum away, against the day of showers. And then my nephew said, “Dear Unk, the riot act I’m reading; if you would cut out buying junk that no sane man is needing, you’d land in Easy street, perhaps, to stay there, ere you know’ it; it’s blowing coin for useless raps that breaks an old fat poet.”